


Have I found you, flightless bird

by misskraken



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Arguing, Cooking, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Light Angst, M/M, Mother Hen Steve Rogers, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:54:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23675710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misskraken/pseuds/misskraken
Summary: Bucky can feel Steve’s eyes drilling into him as they eat dinner, the only sound in the room the clinking of their forks against the sides of their bowls. For the umpteenth time that week, Bucky wishes Steve would just come out and say what’s bothering him.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 14
Kudos: 200





	Have I found you, flightless bird

When it comes to cooking, Steve usually prefers to keep things simple and quick. Feeding two super soldiers who require roughly twice the amount of daily calories as the average man is a tricky game, and he typically favors microwave meals or recipes that he can throw into the crock pot in the morning to have ready for himself and Bucky that night. It suits them just fine, for the most part. 

But every so often, Steve pulls out the big guns and spends all day in the kitchen, filling their apartment with the smell of melting butter and roasting garlic. It only happens on special occasions, when Steve is so overcome with emotion that it comes spilling out in the wonderful things he makes. The last time he locked down the kitchen was the two-year anniversary of Bucky’s homecoming. Pan-seared steak, browned butter mashed potatoes, sautéed greens, and something called a hummingbird cake that felt like a lap-dance for your tastebuds. Bucky has no talent for cooking, usually preferring cleanup duty to prep work, but he made himself useful, chopping up vegetables and clearing away measuring cups. Mostly though, Bucky was just there to distract Steve, kissing the back of Steve’s neck just to watch the pretty red flush creep up the back. 

That being said, it isn’t always sheer joy that sends Steve to the kitchen. Sometimes it’s stress, sadness, or even anger.

Like today, for instance.

There’s a storm coming. Bucky’s known it ever since they got back from their last mission. Steve and Bucky don’t fight all too often (it’s amazing how being kept apart from your true love for 70 years puts things like bringing home the wrong kind of toilet paper or not separating the colored clothes from the white ones on laundry day really puts things into perspective), but when Bucky returns from a Saturday sparring session with Sam to find Steve banging pots and pans around like some kind of vengeful kitchen god, Bucky knows that his number is up.

The mission itself was fairly simple on paper: extract two of Hydra’s most valuable nuclear scientists, a husband and wife duo named Lucius and Marie Crown, from a marine hydra base masquerading as a luxury cruise ship. Bucky, Steve, Sam, and Natasha were all assigned to different parts of the ship, with Steve and Nat being the ones tasked with removing the the Crowns from their cabin. Within fifteen minutes of touching down onto the deck of the ship, Steve had secured Marie and hustled her onto the helicarrier. 

Their was just one problem: Lucius was nowhere to be found.

The only thing that saved the rest of the mission was Bucky’s spotty memory deciding to behave for once. The memory popped up just after Bucky took out a clump of guards near the front of the ship. Bucky had regained most of his memories from before the war, but thanks to the constant, invasive wipes, his time as a Hydra prisoner was a disjointed mess. Some things he could recall with perfect clarity, but other missions were discordant flashes of sound and color. Generally, the less he could remember about his time as the Winter Soldier, the better.

But suddenly, he remembered this ship. Or if not this one, than one just like it.

More importantly, he remembered the escape pods in the hull. 

Bucky started running, blood singing in his ears.

He got there just in time to see the top Lucius Crown’s shiny bald head disappear beneath the black glass of the pod’s suicide door, his smug smile glinting through it like a dime in the bottom of a well.

The fingers of Bucky’s metal hand pierced the glass just as the pod shot out into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. 

Despite the freezing temperature of the water, it took almost no time at all for Bucky to shatter the door completely and wrestle Crown out into open water. If Bucky accidentally broke both of the scientist’s arms trying to keep him from squirming, well, no use crying over spilled milk.

Their heads broke the surface of the water just as Bucky’s lungs started to burn.

“L-longing,” Crown sputtered after spitting out a mouthful of water. “Rusted, daybreak-”

“Oh shut up,” Bucky said, delivering a swift blow to the top of Crown’s head. The scientist’s body went limp in Bucky’s grip, and Bucky wedged a metal finger into the corner of Crown’s mouth. He pried loose the cyanide capsule Hydra had secured beneath his top left molar as precautionary measure and threw it away. With that out of the way, he was finally able to take stock of his situation.

He was about a thousand feet away from the ship, its lights glittering like a thousand stars. Bucky’s four-way earpiece had been knocked out during the struggle, but the com on his forearm still worked. Holding the unconscious scientist’s chin in the crook of his left arm while he treaded water, Bucky tapped the com and heard it crackle to life.

“Natasha?” Bucky said. “Natasha, do you copy? I’ve got Lucius. We’re-“

“Bucky,” Natasha said. “Bucky, listen to me. We’re in the helicarrier. You have to get to the deck now. Sam’s gonna pick you up. Leave Crown if you have to. It was a trap. They knew we were coming.”

“Is he okay?” Steve’s voice came from the background. Muffled though it was, Bucky could hear the raw edge of panic.

“I’m not on the ship,” Bucky said. “He tried to get out through the-“

There was a noise like shattering ice, and for a moment, the night was still.

And then the ship blew up.

Bucky was just far away enough to avoid the raining shrapnel, but the blast still sent him back a yard or two. 

Through the com, Bucky could hear Steve screaming.

“No!”

“Steve!” Natasha said. “Stop! He’s alive. What are you-“

There was a commotion in the background, and I’m his mind’s eye Bucky saw the agents on the helicarrier trying to prevent him from jumping into the water. In Bucky’s arms, Crown stirred a bit, moaning as he woke.

“I’m talking to him right now!” Natasha said. “Here!”

“Steve,” Bucky said. “Sweetheart, it’s me. I’m okay. I got out just in time.”

For a moment, the only sound was Steve’s ragged breathing. 

“Bucky?” Steve finally said, so goddamn hopefully that Bucky’s heart broke a little.

“Yeah, Stevie,” Bucky said, a crazed smile spreading across his face. “Yeah, it’s me.”

Steve let out a long, shuddering breath.

“Thank god,” he said. “Oh, thank god. Where are you?”

“About a quarter mile away from the front of the ship,” Bucky said. “After Crown wasn’t in his room I remembered Hydra once put me on a ship just like this one that had escape pods down in the hull. I found our buddy Lucius making a break for it and grabbed on just when he launched.” Bucky noticed a fresh wound on Crown’s shoulder and dug his fingers into it. “Say hi to my baby, Lucy.”

Crown howled, and Steve let out a shaky laugh. Bucky smiled to himself. Nothing like a Nazi’s pained screaming to cheer his best guy up.

“Well, well, well,” a voice called from above. “I never thought I’d be so happy to see your greasy face.”

Bucky looked up and grinned at the sight of Sam hovering up above him, looking for all the world like some kind of avenging angel in the bloody light of the ship’s flames. 

“Good to see you too, Sam,” Bucky said.

“Crown still alive?” 

“Oh, yeah,” Bucky said, jostling Crown in his arm like one might do with a fussy toddler. “He’s just pissed that a hunky Jewish guy got one over on him.”

Sam just threw his head back and laughed.

And that was basically that: a short, fairly tidy mission that wrapped itself just in time for all four of them to make the early bird special at IHOP.

At least, that’s how it had looked from Bucky’s perspective.

Steve, on the other hand...

Bucky can feel Steve’s eyes drilling into him as they eat the dinner Steve’s prepared for them, the only sound in the room the clinking of their forks against the sides of their bowls. For the umpteenth time that week, Bucky wishes Steve would just come out and say what’s bothering him. They’ve been so busy with their individual responsibilities lately that it’s been difficult to spend a quiet moment together, and what little personal time they can manage has been marred by the elephant in the room. Bucky’s no fool; he knows Steve’s reticence since they got stateside has something to do with the escape pod situation, but every time Bucky asks Steve what’s bothering him, Steve’s melodramatic ass just fixes him with those god-awful puppy eyes and tells him that everything is fine in the same tone of voice a fifteenth-century saint might use to tell people he’s fine and dandy suffering because it brings him closer to god. 

Ok, so maybe Bucky should have communicated a little better before chasing Crown into the hull. Sue him. They still completed the mission successfully, and now a Nazi terrorist organization is short two scientists. 

“Food’s good,” Bucky finally says, taking another bite of pasta. It’s a newer recipe that Steve pulled off of the New York Times website: creamy cauliflower pasta with pecorino breadcrumbs. It’s funny, Bucky vaguely mentioned wanting to try it just last week. The thought that Steve remembered warms his heart.

Steve really does have a funny way of showing anger.

Steve looks up, and for the first time in days, he smiles, really smiles. Not the cheese-eating grin that he breaks out at Avengers charity events, but the slow, crooked little smile that he reserves especially for Bucky, so sweet and bright that it makes Bucky want to lean over the table and kiss it off just to see if it tastes like summer sunlight.

And then it’s gone, and Steve’s face is once again a prim, blank mask.

“I’m glad you think so,” he says.

Bucky rolls his eyes and drains the last of his sangria. Steve may be his soulmate, his salvation, the other half of his heart and soul, yada yada yada, but Jesus Christ, he’s a pain in the ass sometimes. Maybe it’s the years of having to compose himself into beacon of hope and stability for the cameras, but Bucky has no idea what to do with Steve’s newfound love of suppressing his feelings until they inevitably come boiling out. Oddly enough, Bucky always found the old Steve’s hair-trigger temper easier to deal with. If Steve were the way he was back in the forties, ninety-five pounds soaking wet and endowed with the fury of a thousand Canadian geese, Bucky would just scoop Steve up and place him on top of the fridge till he calmed down enough to talk things through.

Okay, maybe not. But the thought makes him chuckle.

“Somethin’ funny?”

Bucky takes another bite of pasta and shakes his head. “Nope.”

“I can tell you something that’s not funny,” Steve says brightly. “That stunt you pulled on the ship.”

Bucky drops his fork onto his plate and throws his hands in the air. “Fucking finally!”

“I’m serious, Buck,” Steve says. “You went off on your own and you-“

“Excuse me?” Bucky says. “You’re pissed at me for going off on my own? You? Steve Rogers? Mr. ‘I’m gonna defy direct orders and storm a Nazi base on the off chance that my man might still be-‘“

A muscle feathers in Steve’s jaw. “That’s different and you know it.”

“Is it though?” Bucky asks. “‘Cause the way I see it, what I did was less reckless than most everything you’ve gotten yourself into since you were like, nineteen.”

“You could have died.”

“Oh my god, we all could have died,” Bucky said, raking a hand through his hair. “It’s an occupational hazard, Stevie. But guess what? We didn’t. And now two Nazi bastards are out of commission. Yeah, obviously I should have told you what I was doing, but you can’t honestly tell me that you wouldn’t have done the same thing in my position.”

All in all, Bucky thinks he makes a pretty compelling argument. But Steve just looks down at his plate and rakes his teeth over his bottom lip. When he looks up at Bucky again, his eyes are centuries old. 

Steve opens his mouth, and then he shuts it. Then he stands up, pushes his chair in, and takes his plate to the sink.

“Typical,” Bucky snorts as Steve turns on the faucet. “I make a valid point and you decide to end the argument you started.”

“I’m not ending anything,” Steve says mildly, squirting detergent onto his plate. He scratches the back of his left ankle with his right foot, and Bucky notices that his socks are mismatched. “You clearly have shit figured out, so what the hell would you need my input for?”

Steve sounds so much like Bucky’s mother during one of her patented guilt trips that Bucky doesn’t know whether to laugh or scream. All that he’s missing is a floral housedress and a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses.

“Oh for the love of— You wanna know what your problem is?”

“I have a feeling you’re gonna tell me either way.”

“You’re goddamn right.” Bucky gets up from the table. Infuriatingly, Steve still won’t turn around. 

“You never used to be afraid of anything before the fucking serum, and I don’t mean that as a compliment,” Bucky says. “What I wouldn’t have given for you to have had a sliver, no, a crumb of self-preservation skills so I didn’t have to pull you away from certain death by the scruff of your neck every time something pissed you off. And now that you’ve got the serum, you’re afraid of all the wrong shit. You’re still putting yourself in harm’s way every chance you get, but when it comes to me, you act like I’m some kind of helpless little waif who can’t take care of himself like I wasn’t protecting your pipsqueak ass right up until the day you met Erskine.”

“I know you’re not helpless, Buck, and I know you know that.” Steve’s scrubbing at the plate like he’s fucking Lady Macbeth, and there’s a warning in his voice.

“Yeah?” Bucky says. “Then why don’t you act like it?”

The plate clatters to the bottom of the sink, and when Steve turns around... Jesus, there’s no word for what Bucky sees in his eyes.

“Because I lost you!” Steve snarls. “I lost you and they hurt you and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. And nothing, do you hear me, nothing has scared me that bad since except the though thought of losing you again.”

Steve’s words rip the air straight from Bucky’s lungs, swift and sudden as a baby tooth tied to the handle of a slamming door. When Bucky doesn’t respond, Steve scrubs a hand over his face and keeps going.

“I know... I know you can handle yourself,” Steve says, his voice ragged. “Jesus, if anyone should know that, it’s me. You’re the strongest person I know, and I’m so goddamn proud of you it hurts. If anyone ever had the right to hide themselves away every horrible thing in the world, it’s you. But you’ve never let your fear get in the way of doing the right thing.”

“Neither do you, Steve.” Bucky’s voice is quiet in his own ears, and he know’s that if he projects it any louder it will crack.

“But that’s not completely true, is it?” Steve says, and, oh, there’s that little smile again, crooked and sad as the page of a ruined book. “You were right when you said that I would have done the same thing if I were you. But if I were there with you when you decided to make a break for the hull, I would’ve tried to stop you. And that’s what really guts me about the whole thing. I’m so scared of losing you that I would’ve stalled you long enough to put both of us in danger. Crown would’ve gotten away, and we might not have been able to get to the helicarrier in time.”

“Don’t say that,” Bucky says. He takes an involuntary step towards Steve. He wants to reach out and touch him, but there’s a glassy, feverish look in Steve’s eyes that stills his hands. “None of that happened.”

“I see it happening, though,” Steve says. His voice is brittle. “Losing you. Over and over again. I thought it would get better after our first few missions, but it hasn’t. Hell, I feel it even when we’re not in any danger at all. I hold you at night sometimes, and when I close my eyes there’s a part of me that says, this is it. I’m gonna wake up and find that this has all been some kind of perfect fever dream and that you’ve been gone the whole time. ‘Cause every day since you came back has been a fucking miracle. No other word for what it’s like loving you.” Steve’s speaking faster now, his words tumbling over themselves like blocks from a child’s toy chest. “And I love you, Buck. I do. With all my fucking heart. But God knows I haven’t— I haven’t earned you—“

Steve’s face crumbles, and some wordless, wrenching noise comes tearing out of Bucky’s throat as he launches himself at Steve. Their arms lock around each other in a vice, and when Steve buries his face in the side of Bucky’s neck, Bucky feels him shaking.

“Jesus, Steve,” Bucky murmurs through the tears that clog his throat. He turns his head and presses kiss after kiss into Steve’s tawny hair, and he smells like sunlight, like everything good and real and precious. 

Steve. His brave, battered boy.

Bucky understands Steve’s fear, and god, he wishes that he didn’t. Bucky’s been in therapy for two years now, which helps, but no matter how many grounding exercises he does, the fear that his life with Steve is just too precious for him to keep raises its head time and time again. This life, this love, is something that Bucky would have hated himself for even daring to dream about in the 1940s. 

Coming back to bed after getting a drink of water only to find that Steve’s rolled over into Bucky’s spot to keep it warm for him.

Having breakfast with Steve at the little deli down the street and watching Steve sprinkle the sesame seeds that fall off his bagel onto the cream cheese.

Waking up from a nightmare filled with blood and ice with Steve’s arms wrapped around him, his voice crooning soft and low in his ear that he’s safe, that he’s alright.

Jesus, Steve...

The two of them stay like that for a while, just holding each other, breathing each other in. Bucky runs his left hand up and down the expanse of Steve’s back, the metal plates whirring almost noiselessly as he traces the notches in Steve’s spine. Steve has stopped shaking, and his fingers twist listlessly in Bucky’s long hair, still a little damp from the shower he took at the gym.

Finally, Steve pulls back a little, just enough so that they can finally look at each other. Steve’s face is flushed, and his lashes are clumped together in little damp spikes. Steve raises a hand to swipe at the lingering moisture, but Bucky beats him to it, dabbing at his eyes with the cuff of his sweatshirt. Steve catches Bucky’s wrist and turns his hand to press a kiss to the center. 

“God, I’m sorry, Buck,” Steve says. “I just wanted us to have a nice dinner together together, and I ruined it by acting like a fucking idiot.”

“You’re not a fucking idiot,” Bucky says softly. “You’re my fucking idiot, and don’t you forget it.”

Steve snorts, his eyes lighting up for a split second before the shadows come back. He pulls Bucky close so that their pelvises touch, knitting his fingers together at the small of Bucky’s back.

“I guess I just don’t trust the world to give us a happy ending,” Steve says finally, his voice sad but resigned. 

Bucky takes Steve’s face in his hands and gently tilts it up so that their eyes meet.

“I don’t trust it either,” Bucky says, “but let me ask you this: do you trust the fact that I love you?”

Without hesitation, Steve nods.

“Good,” Bucky says, “‘cause I do. More than anything.” He drops a kiss to Steve’s chin, to his forehead, to the bridge of the crooked nose that not even the serum could straighten. Steve closes his eyes, lets out a sigh as Bucky’s stubble grazes his face.

“And let me tell you something else,” Bucky continues. “I’m never gonna put myself in a situation that I don’t think I have a fighting chance of getting out of. No matter what happens, I’m gonna find a way to come home to you. Like it or not Rogers, you’re stuck with me till-“

“The end of the line?” Steve says, his wry smirk like the first ray of sun after a week of rain.

“Yeah, baby,” Bucky says, smiling and tilting his head up for the first of many kisses that night. “The end of the line.”


End file.
